Research On The Environmental Protection Verification System Of Listed Companies

As a government environmental policy for examining and verifying enterprise’s environmental problems, the environmental protection verification system of listed companies has made remarkable contributions to strengthening enterprise’s awareness of environmental protection, increasing enterprise’s investment in environmental costs and normalizing enterprise’s environmental behaviors since it was first established in 2001. With environmental protection verification system, environmental behaviors of enterprises are verified before their listing so as to reach the purpose of regulating the direction of market investment, avoiding environmental risk and perfecting the supervisory system. However, many problems have emerged over the period from the establishment of the environmental protection verification system to its gradual perfection. When China’s securities issuance system is transformed from verification system to registration system, the Ministry of Environmental Protection called off the continuous implementation of the environmental protection verification system of listed companies at the end of 2014. As a result, environmental protection problems of China’s listed companies start to face a new round of exploration and research.In the context of the overhaul of securities issuance system of listed companies, this paper discusses the legal attributes and legal principles of the environmental protection verification system of listed companies, and summarizes the numerous problems exposed over the ten-plus years of implementation of the environmental protection verification system while acknowledging the outstanding contributions it has made to China’s environmental protection. Besides, in combination with the overseas research results in the related fields, this paper attempts to put forward some unique opinions as to the environmental protection problems of listed companies.This paper is divided into five parts. Part One reviews the relevant concepts and characteristics of listed companies, verification system of listed companies and environmental protection verification system of listed companies. Part Two analyzes the environmental protection verification system of listed companies from the perspective of legal attributes and principles. Part Three summarizes the problems of the environmental protection verification system on the basis of the previous two parts. Part Four introduces overseas research results and contents in the fields relating to environmental protection verification. Part Five makes a summary of the whole paper and proposes solutions to solve the environmental problems of listed companies after the environmental protection verification system is suspended.